Writer's Conference

Each year for the past thirtish years our local university hosts a writer's conference which has seen authors such as Truman Capote and Allen Ginsberg ...... Tennessee Williams and Tom Wolfe .... Louise Erdrich and Marilynne Robinson ..... this year was Barry Lopez (though I didn't make it to his presentation)... I went to a few of the events but the one I enjoyed most was Mark Salzman, author of Lost in Place: Growing up Absurd in Suburbia, Iron and Silk and a book I recently read, True Notebooks: A Writer's Year at Juvenile Hall. Of course he's written a number of other books and I suspect if they read anything like he speaks I'll enjoy them immensely.

As a teacher, True Notebooks was a book that hit a chord with me. Of course the students in our alternative school look pretty tame when compared to the kids Salzman works with in the Los Angeles juvenile hall where he volunteers as a creative writing teacher twice a week as part of the Inside-Out writing program. The book is a quick read that challenged my thinking on youth, crime and redemption... it moved me to tears again and again.

The theme of the conference was on crossing borders.... and Salzman felt that in his life the border that he'd faced the most was in the gap between who we are and who we hope, or once hoped, to become. His talk then went on to tell in rather humorous fashion (a sort of self-deprecating humor) the ambitions of his life and how it unfolded for him...

How at 13 he longed to become a "kung fu master enlightened zen monk." Salzman tried to learn everything he could to make this dream a reality... of course he had to resort to the World Book Encyclopedia... but that image brought at a smile to my face as I thought about how many times I researched things in our own 1980 set of encyclopedias .... Ahhh... the days before Internet.

Then later when that dream began to dwindle he sought to make his mark on the world by becoming a world renowned cellist... until he heard Yo-Yo Ma perform and he realized he could never compare.... all his efforts were simply a "joyless exercise in eliminating mistakes."

He immediately changed his college major to something much more useful.... "Classical Chinese Literature." He was convinced the reason he never really became enlightened in his youth was because the translations from Chinese to English were poor and something was lost in the process... What he learned after years of college? Existing translations were adequate!

His education led him to accept an job in China teaching English for two years and then upon his return to the US he would discover he had stories to tell and that he could write them... before long a book emerged and upon his first favorable review... he realized "that he ALWAYS wanted to be a writer!"

Of course this is the ridiculously shortened, rather humorless rendering of Salzman's talk... but I think you'd get more of him from his books or by taking an opportunity to hear him speak if you ever have the chance.